The end of the Old Testament... pointing simultaneously forward and back. This forward and back motion, once seen in the biblical narrative, is hard to not see. I don't think it's any sort of magical key, any sort of code to decipher the more cryptic messages of the Bible, but I do think it adds to the richness of the text.
"Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes."
The disciples' question in Mark's text follows the transfiguration. They ask: "Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" The disciples themselves do not seem to understand what is going on. The people who spent the most time with Jesus seem to be scratching their heads along with everyone else. Elijah? Back from the dead? Riding his chariot back or the whirlwind back to earth to point to the Messiah?
So often, we want to read the Bible as a book written with crystal-clear precision, with no conflicting information, with no texts that disagree with each other. To do this, however, would reduce it to a book with little more depth or meaning than a Dick and Jane book. The text is complicated and, at times, it's incredibly convoluted. It could be viewed as inconsistent and therefore not believable. We could go through, like Marcion or Thomas Jefferson, and take out the parts we don't like. Alternatively, it could be read as God attempting to reach forward and back through history, sweeping us up in the narrative through whatever means necessary to get our attention. Scratching our heads along with the disciples, at least God has gotten our attention.
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